That's the lesson in this month's web usage statistics from NetMarketShare, which measure worldwide usage share of desktop and mobile operating systems and browsers.
Microsoft's Windows 8.1 clocked usage of 1.72 percent, doubling its share from the previous month. That gives the Windows 8.x family a total usage share of 9.25 percent after one full year on the market. (Historically speaking, it appears that Windows 8 is following the same adoption patterns as Windows XP, whose share of the installed base was also just under 10 percent after its first year on the market.)

Usage of Windows XP, which celebrated its 12th birthday in October, continues to drop precipitously in NetMarketShare's measurements as it heads toward its end-of-support date less than six months from now. For October, XP usage dropped to 31.24 percent, a new low. Windows 7 usage is virtually unchanged from the previous month, with just under half of all PCs running that flavor of Windows.

That's good to see, regardless of where the upgrades go to, it's time that Windows XP started fading out. The big kicker is businesses that use specialist pieces of software that aren't compatible with newer versions, or don't have the funding to roll out an upgrade.

I remember my University's labs still had ivory coloured CRT displays and boxes still running Win98/2000.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but specifically in the month of October there really wasn't much of a "precipitous drop" for XP?! It went from 31.42% to 31.24%. That's pretty close to the drop that Windows overall experienced (90.81% to 90.66%).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but specifically in the month of October there really wasn't much of a "precipitous drop" for XP?! It went from 31.42% to 31.24%. That's pretty close to the drop that Windows overall experienced (90.81% to 90.66%).

Neither did Windows 8 surge. 8.1 did.

8.1 and 8 are for all intents and purposes the same OS, since 8.1 is a free upgrade.

I'd say if you qualify the last few months rather than only this month, it's a decent surge.

Indeed, and 8/8.1 went from 8.89% to 9.24% in the month of October. On the other hand, 8.1 doubled its marketshare. That's what I (and I think the original article as is implied in the original title, which Dot Matrix adapted) call a surge.

I'd say if you qualify the last few months rather than only this month, it's a decent surge.

Looks like Windows 7 gained almost as much as Windows 8/8.1. Still not even 10%?! I knew Windows 8/8.1 was doing bad but I didn't know it was THAT bad. Good to see people finally moving on from Windows XP though.

Edit: Oh, I didn't see that Windows 7 actually gained more market share than Windows 8 did in September.